How to Add Social Media Buttons to Your Joomla Site

Social media buttons have made spreading the word about your website easier than ever. Users love the “like”, “share” and “tweet” buttons because they can easily recommend Web pages to their friends, family and followers. Website owners love them because they get free exposure and incoming links.

Users love the “like”, “share” and “tweet” buttons

So how does it work? Just place the social buttons on your Joomla website. When users click them, they’re taken to the social media site (usually Facebook or Twitter) where they can post the link and even add a few words about the article. Their friends and followers can see the link and click through to the site. Brilliant!

Get free traffic with social media

There are two ways to add social buttons to your Joomla site:

Use a module

If you want to promote the entire site, rather than specific articles, you can install a Joomla social bookmarking module and place it “above the fold.” Your visitors won’t be able to miss it wherever they are on your site.

Use a plugin

If you want allow users to share specific articles, install one of the many available Joomla plugins that place social media buttons automatically on your articles. Some extensions even allow you to choose the sections and categories on which the plugin appears.

Here’s a video that explains how to add a social media module to your website. There are several available that work in roughly the same way, but PGT SocialWeb is my favorite.

Adding a social media module to your Joomla site:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/23812794[/vimeo]

This is how you do it:

1. Download and install the PGT SocialWeb module.
2. Go to Module Manager.
3. Filter by pgt.
4. Open the module and change the title.
5. Disable the title and enable the module.
6. On the right, hide all the buttons except for “share” and “tweet.”
7. Select “home page” as the URL.
8. Save/Apply.

Adding a social media plugin to your Joomla site:

To use a plugin that allows users to share specific articles, download any of the Joomla Social bookmarking plugins. You can find a full list here.

Do you use social bookmarking on your Joomla site? What’s your favorite module/plugin?